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A Knox County man has been found guilty in the Memorial Day death of his 3-year-old son.

Lucas Heagren found his father’s loaded .45-caliber handgun under a couch in the family home
near Mount Vernon and accidentally shot himself in the head. He died hours later.

Two photos of Joshua E. Heagren, 25, showing his son how to shoot a gun proved crucial to the
case, Knox County Prosecutor John Thatcher said yesterday.

“Lucas turned 3 at the end of January (2012),” Thatcher said. “His father gave him a .22 rifle
for Christmas (2011) at age 2 years, 11 months. There was a Facebook picture of Joshua crouching in
the snow showing his son how to the shoot the gun. There was another photo of Lucas holding an
AR-15 assault rifle last spring.”

In Heagren’s trial before a judge lasty Tuesday, Dr. Daniel Coury, chief of developmental and
behavioral pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, testified that toddlers cannot understand
how dangerous guns can be, and it is not appropriate to try to teach gun safety to a toddler beyond
the simple admonition, “Don’t touch.”

Licking County Common Pleas Judge David Branstool convicted Heagren of child endangering, a
third-degree felony, and negligent homicide, a first-degree misdemeanor. He announced his verdict
yesterday.

Thatcher said Heagren testified that he normally kept the .45-caliber handgun under his
mattress. He had taken it out and slipped it under the couch because he was going to go shooting
later, but he then got distracted, he testified.

Heagren’s attorney, James Giles, declined to comment. “This is not the kind of case you
celebrate,” Thatcher said. “I don’t know a bad thing about these people. ... They just made some
really bad decisions about guns and how soon to attempt to teach proper gun safety.”

Branstool, who heard the case after a Knox County Common Pleas judge recused himself, deferred
sentencing pending a pre-sentence investigation. Heagren could face a maximum of three years in
prison for child-endangering and six months for negligent homicide.